Integrating Smalltalk with Major Web Servers using FastCGI

Peter William Lount peter at smalltalk.org
Sun Oct 22 20:45:05 UTC 2000


Hi,

Remember that when using FastCGI the Smalltalk "application server" is a
seperate process from the web servers processes. The ModFastCGI module
component that is already written in C and embedded in the WebServers would
responds to the signals you mentioned (see below). If you need to have
those signals get to the FastCGI client there is an 'error' provision in
the fast cgi protocol. Please see the FastCGI specification and other
papers linked to at http://www.mod.smalltalk.org.

Certainly we'd need to cover the situations when significant problems
happen with the web server or the modFastCGI module taking them out of
service. The Smalltalk "application server" should respond appropiately to
unusual situations and conditions. FastCGI already addresses this to some
extent and we should note how they handle exceptional conditions in their
web module and in the application servers.

Smalltalk, Squeak or other versions, can co-exist with the FastCGI enabled
web servers as a "stand alone application server" - all it takes is a
simple addition of a small framework of Smalltalk level classes that
implement FastCGI using TCP/IP or UNIX sockets. Since (Squeak) Smalltalk
would be a standalone program you could even be developing and debugging in
it while it's running as an application server! This is the magic of the
FastCGI protocol.

In addition, if we need to have the FastCGI protocol do something that it
currently does not then I recommend that we work with the existing
opensource FastCGI group and add the capabilities that we need. This then
benefits all users of FastCGI no matter what language, OS, or web server
they are using. It also gives Smalltalk a good name. It would also be great
to have the Smalltalk FastCGI source linked from the FastCGI home page thus
promoting Smalltalk to Perl, C, and Java users who already have their
versions avaliable there.

All the best,

Peter William Lount, peter at smalltalk.org

----------
From: Ned Konz <ned at bike-nomad.com>
To: peter at smalltalk.org
Subject: Re: Integrating Smalltalk with Major Web Servers using FastCGI
Date: October 22, 2000 1:01 PM

Peter William Lount wrote:

> It also should result in a highly portable implemention
> since the source could ALL be written in Smalltalk code!

Well, not entirely.

What about responding to SIGTERM, SIGUSR1 (for mod_fastcgi), and SIGPIPE
signals? I don't think there's a Smalltalk-only way to do this (in fact,
the Squeak handling of OS-level signals is pretty much nonexistent except
for SEGV, which prints a ST stack and dies).

-- 
Ned Konz
currently: Stanwood, WA
email:     ned at bike-nomad.com
homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com





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